This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien's "The Lord of
the Rings" or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is
even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is
being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant
stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks.

This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 lightyears
away in the southern constellation Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and
deployment into an orbit around Earth.

Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are
shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of hot ionized gas can be seen flowing
off the ridges of the structure, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks.
The denser parts of the pillar are resisting being eroded by radiation much like a towering butte in Utah's Monument
Valley withstands erosion by water and wind.

Nestled inside this dense mountain are fledgling stars. Long streamers of gas can be seen shooting in opposite
directions off the pedestal at the top of the image. Another pair of jets is visible at another peak near the center of the
image. These jets (known as HH 901 and HH 902, respectively) are the signpost for new star birth. The jets are launched
by swirling disks around the young stars, which allow material to slowly accrete onto the stars' surfaces.

Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on Feb. 1-2, 2010. The colors in this composite image correspond to
the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red).

April 22, 2010
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)